


The Devil Went Down To Soho

by babyklingon (asparagusmama), BabyKlingon



Series: 'All my own work!' - babyklingon's little pieces [9]
Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Community: lewis_challenge, Gen, International Fanworks Day 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 10:12:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3352742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asparagusmama/pseuds/babyklingon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/BabyKlingon/pseuds/BabyKlingon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Returning to England, unhappy, from Spain, James stays with an old school friend and finds himself in an unusual battle...</p><p>Written for the lewis_challenge prompt song The Devil Went Down to Georgia by Charlie Daniel's Band</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil Went Down To Soho

James had just got back from Spain. He came out of the station and into the bustle of London. He breathed deeply, English air; air without Lewis - nope - don’t think about that. He walked down the escalator into the tube station - shit was that Hobson? Shit! And Lewis? 

No can't be, no, it is! He ducked behind a standalone poster 

“Hathaway? Robbie its Hathaway." Laura said and dodged people to get to him. James steeled himself. 

“How are you? How long have you back?" 

* * *

"Down the hatch!" William and his fellow barristers yelled as James knocked back his tenth- or was it his fifteen? Never mind - vodka shot- or was it gin?  
James was so out of it, when William had suggested coming out with him to celebrate winning a case and his homecoming, he had almost declined. But what was the alterative? Sitting in William’s flat and playing the conversation he’d had with Hobson and Lewis over and over in his head? No thank you. Making his excuses for a cigarette he walked out and into the smoking cage.

Why do they put you in a cage? Is it meant to a punishment?

He breathed deeply trying to clear his head. They were in a trendy part of Soho; he walked over to a low wall a lit up another cigarette watching the people stumble out of another bar. He heard a fiddle and people shouting in encouragement. He snubbed out his cigarette and walked back into the bar.

While he had been gone people had a made a space and someone stood in the middle playing a lively tune on a fiddle. James spotted William and push his way through the throng to them, “What’s happening?" he asked, finding his beer. 

"Happens every Friday night," he slurred, “music battle. This guy challenges someone them they fight using whatever instrument they want.” 

"Ok," James said and lent back on the bar to watch the battle commence. But there wasn’t anyone willing and after a while the fiddler stopped playing a grabbed a woman and started dancing with her. Everyone laughed as the DJ started playing ‘Addicted To Love’. 

"Hey James my boy, you play the guitar don’t you?" William asked very loudly in a slight pause in the music and people shouting, the fiddler must've heard. 

"We have a contender!" he screamed at the crowd as they roared their approval and two barmen grabbed James and threw him into the space. Suddenly a guitar was pressed into his hands. 

"Um... I don’t..." he started to say. The fiddler shook his head.

"Calm down boy," he said, not much older than James himself, “look, just pick out some chords and I do something, then you. Whoever the crowd cheers the most for wins and you get 50 quid right?" James nodded and swallowed hard. 

"Go!" the barman shouted and the fiddler started playing something very lively. James picked up on it. He recognized it. It was his Mum’s favourite song she uses to play it continually when he was a kid. The devil went down to Georgia. 

"Just rearrange the chords and go with the flow!" the fiddler shouted and stopped playing. James picked it the guitar...

The cold wooden frets felt unfamiliar in his hands, it was not his baby, and it didn’t feel quite right. But he had learnt on a guitar similar, he closed his eyes, thinking of sitting in the kitchen in the school holidays, his Mum singing at the sink, and picked out the chords, his fingers flying, the music all becoming familiar as he remembered more and more wet summer holidays and endless days with nothing to do but play and read and play some more...

Without James noticing the crowd picked up on his rearrangement, people were clapping and stamping feet as his he continued to play, his fingers sore as he tried to match the speed of the fiddle...


End file.
